There are many situations when an individual may need, or desire, to send an alarm in order to get immediate help or assistance. Also, an individual may want to notify or inform his/hers surrounding about location and present status in order mitigate risk and/or to enable fast response time if an emergency situation requiring assistance should occur.
For the above situations, various surveillance systems and alarm devices are known which allow a user to communicate or send an alarm to an alarm central, or a person, in order to receive assistance. Common devices includes mobile or wire phones or communication devices which automatically or manually transmits, via e.g. a communication network, a voice or text message containing information identifying an alarm situation.
For example, U.S. 2009/0181640 describes an interactive personal surveillance and security system for a user carrying a wireless communication device, wherein the portable communication device is capable of capturing and sending surveillance information, such as video, images, audio, etc. to a remotely located surveillance system.
However, the surveillance system described in U.S. 2009/018640 is complex and expensive and requires cumbersome preconfigured sets of instructions to process, analyze and transmit/receive alarm information. Also, the systems is disadvantageous in that the response time for relaying an alarm to relevant users is long which results in a slow and inefficient system. Hence, the system does not allow help or assistance to reach a user in need sufficiently fast.
Further attention is drawn to U.S. 2006/0202819, generally relating to a method and system for alerting a person to a situation, and particularly to a method and system for alerting a member of a contact list to an emergency situation. However, U.S. 2006202819 only provides limited improvements in allowing help or assistance to reach a user in need sufficiently fast
Accordingly, there is desired to provide improvements to the above system for sending an alarm in order to enable more efficient, durable, and fail-safe assistance to a person in need. Thereby, for example the level of personal safety for users of the system may be increased.